Galapagos - Day 7: Santa Cruz

Today we land at the second largest island in the archipelago (outside of Isabela, the seahorse shaped island), Santa Cruz.  This is where we originally landed by plane as well. It's the most built up island here so instead of zodiac adventures looking for wildlife, we are doing a visit to the Galapagos National Park service and tortoise breeding center. 

The drive over has a good view of the telescoping effect of the landscape (ie, watching as several elevation landscape zones are passed through in quick succession). It was kind of strange being in a bus though -- we've been at sea and on uninhabited islands for so long that the idea of roads and cars was a little foreign feeling!

Here are some shots from the bus of Puerto Ayora, the "big city" of the Galapagos! (Home to 18,000 inhabitants, so big is a little relative). 

We soon arrived at the Galapagos National Park. 

And shortly thereafter, hit the entrance to the Charles Darwin Research Center. Btw, mystery solved, the guides kept saying what I heard as "Charizard" center and I was confused if they named some center after the pokemon, who I think is a fire lizard -- in actuality, they were just saying Charles Darwin really fast and dropping the "win" syllable at the end.

Here's Yeye checking for the resemblance to Darwin -- not bad! 😆 

Once we got inside the research center, we broke off into small groups for the Turtle Path. Here's our guide Christian telling us about the Galapagos prickly pear cactus tree here. I thought it was pretty cool how the tree just curved there at the top and then started growing further upside down. 

The turtle path was shaded by trees growing and bending down on both sides. Not a ton to see, but very picturesque. 

Okay, I guess nothing to see except things we've seen many times now before. But I guess I'll throw in this Galapagos mockingbird. 

The path leads to the Fausto Llerena giant tortoise captive breeding center. But it was cool because there were lots of exhibits along the way talking about evolution, Darwin's personal history, etc. for some reason, I really liked this poster/comment:

If you can't quite read it, it says "if their favorite food is next to the nest, then why fly?" (Explaining why the Galapagos Cormorants evolved to become flightless). 

This breeding center was also the home of “Lonesome George”, the last of the Pinta Island tortoises. When he died, the species became officially extinct.  He normally can be viewed (as a taxidermist) but he was out for maintenance right now. Apparently some California scientists went to Pinta and took what they thought were the last three remaining Pinta tortoises...well....they missed George. So he basically was alone on the island for half a century -- this the nickname "Lonesome George."

Christian also talked us through the three or four tortoise species that are also in danger of becoming extinct -- but there were also some success stories. They were down to like 2 males and 10 females in one species but then located one that was living in the San Diego zoo -- once they brought him back here, he was extremely social -- I think Christian said that 50% of all the tortoises in this species now stem from the San Diego import. 

But onto the real stars: the tortoises! Here are some adult hood tortoises being bred here. Once they reach age 5, they are released back into the wild. I hear these guys can eat up to 80 pounds a day if they are super hungry!

Check out that super long neck. They evolved that way because the plants on their native island were not on the ground (like grass) but instead on shrubs and trees, so they needed longer limbs and necks to reach the food. 

And of course the baby tortoises! These ones are less than 1 year old. 

The juveniles seemed to be eating nonstop during our entire visit. Maybe not that unlike human juveniles...

I didn't quite get the full shot here, but basically the way that tortoises (who are actually quite territorial) fight is not by scratching or biting or otherwise getting physical, they just face each other and then lift up their legs and necks as far up as they can -- whoever is tallest wins and the other guy knows to back down. This was the aftermath of such a "fight" - the tortoise on the right lost and is backing away. 

After we finished touring the research center, we were allocated about 90 minutes before lunch to shop for local souvenirs. No pictures, but got some Christmas shopping out of the way! 

The food at lunch (Bahia Mar) was quite good -- but the real X-factor was the amazing view.

 

After lunch, we went back on our buses to travel up to Manzanillo, a local ranch known for producing coffee and moonshine.  They also happen to be on the migratory route of the giant tortoises of Santa Cruz. Indeed - there were SO many tortoises. They were everywhere -- and even though they don't move very fast, I still had to keep moving to avoid getting in their path!

And they were BIG. (Also can we notice how amazingly lush and green this part of the island is? No color filters used on any of these!)

Baba stayed home today because he seems to be coming down with the flu or a bad cold. So no one was there to prevent me from taking copious amounts of selfies. 

We also managed to watch a mating session - the male tortoise makes a very loud grunting noise when he's mating and Salvador knew that sound so we just followed the sound until we found the pair. This was definitely an animal encounter I won't soon forget!

After the ranch visit, we boarded the bus again. This time, our destination was the Los Gemelos volcanic sink holes. Los Gemelos is twins in Spanish -- as the two sink holes are very close to one another and very similar in size and appearance. 

We also got to get a close look at the Scalesia cloud forest.  These trees are also known as broccoli trees - or Darwin refered to them as giant dandelions. I think broccoli is a better description personally...

The more scientific description: Scalesia is a genus of the family Asteraceae (daisy family) that is endemic to the Galapagos and consists of 15 native shrubs and tree species with six subspecies, earning the genus the Darwin’s finch of the plant world due to its great ability of adaptive radiation. 

After that we boarded the buses again back to the dock to take the zodiac back to the ship. Sadly, Baba is not feeling better yet...hopefully by tomorrow morning though? If be had to miss one day, today was probably not a bad one to miss. 

Galapagos - Day 6: Isabela (aka Dolphin Bay)

Amazingly we are allowed to sleep in today! No activities scheduled until the late late hour of 8am today. I successfully slept through the anchor chain again -- I think my brain has started to normalize the sound. 

Today was a comparably speaking less active day: we began with a zodiac ride (wet landing again) to Urbina Bay for a nature walk. But the real highlight was the ride out there -- we found ourselves in a ridiculously large pod of bottlenose dolphins. (Dolphin Bay is not a real name, I'm just calling it that because there were so many dolphins).  These guys were jumping up, chasing each other, huge splashes, it was amazing. Here's Yeye's best shot. I'm going to tell myself he made some color filtering adjustments...because my photos were nowhere near this level of brilliant blue!

Though nowhere near as pretty, here are some videos I took to try and capture the volume of activity going on:

After watching the dolphins for a good while (honestly I could have stayed another hour), we landed on Urbina Bay for the nature hike. We were expecting to view iguanas but instead quickly happened upon some small tortoises. I'm pretty sure this turtle stayed in the exact same position for hours.

The only change was when someone got a little close and it tucked its head inside a bit. 

Check out the slow chew...reminds me of the Zootopia sloths. 😆 

This was the last item left on Ian's Galapagos wish list. Well...also whale sharks but those are out of season, so this was the last one on his reasonably possible list. 

Here is our leader for the afternoon walk - Salvador. He specializes in snorkeling too and has been doing this for so long that he really seems to know everything about the plants and animals in the Galapagos. (He's showing us a discarded tortoise shell).

There were a few iguanas too. 

Also some nice flowers:

Today's lunch was particularly colorful so I figured it deserves a photo spot in today's blog. The Ecuadorean specialty on the left there was my favorite (a pork/beef kebab like thing on pita with vegetables).

After some energy- refreshing naps, we set off on our pre-dinner excursion: zodiac wildlife cruise along Volcan Ecuador.  Nainai got the primo spotting seat this time:

Unfortunately there wasn't a ton of wildlife to be seen (or maybe we've just gotten more demanding because the "common" stuff isn't exciting anymore...). Here's a cool shot from inside a cave created by constant wave erosion. Baba, Nainai and I had decided to skip the afternoon snorkeling in favor of catching a few more zzzs but Yeye went and said underwater this cave is amazing because there are dozens and dozens of turtles all around. 

We did catch a few but presumably it was much better via underwater. Here's my best sighting:

More blue-footed boobies were spotted...I'm going to start short-handing to BFBs. 

Though I will say the cliff wall that we were cruising along was pretty cool looking. 

Okay - ONE more BFB shot. 

Here's a shot of the cave from the outside. Such cool colors, eh?

After we got back onboard, there was a ship party in celebration of passing over the equatorial line. Great background scenery for the occasion!

Screenshot of the monumental moment:

The officers all joined us for a congo line party. 

We were rewarded with "I crossed the Equator" pins.

Closing it out today with a photo of tonight's dessert -- I was very impressed with the cherry-blossom-esque design with jelly/sauce. 

And I'm told this is now officially the middle of the cruise - vacation half over! *Tear* Tomorrow is our "return to quasi-civilization" day -- will hopefully finally have some reliable wifi/phone service!

Galapagos - Day 5: Isabela & Fernandina

I am starting to think all those sample itineraries they had in the cruise marketing that start at 8am were intentionally misleading because we once again have a 6:15AM activity start day...I apparently slept through the anchor chains this time though so actually felt fairly awake and well rested when we were heading out on the pre-breakfast wildlife viewing zodiac ride for our new location: Isla Isabela (the biggest island of the Galapagos, shaped like a seahorse. We did not go very far before seeing the elusive Galapagos penguins! Penguins on the Galapagos don't create huge colonies the way that the other penguins do -- so the naturalist guide noted that our sighting of 4 or so was actually quite a large crowd.

I didn't manage a shot of this, but the real highlight was watching the penguins one by one plop on their bottoms and just slide down the rock here into the water. Looked like a lot of fun!

More blue-footed boobies -- hard to believe these could ever become "meh" but honestly after having seen so many yesterday, we weren't even that excited. 

There were SO many birds flying around and landing that everyone on the zodiac was very thankful for our hat cover!

Can you count all of the birds in this picture? Hint: I think it's at least 20-30. 

The birds literally find any small rock to use as a landing spot. It almost reminds me of the patterns drawn on a Greek vase.

We even saw some Galapagos Flightless Cormorants hanging out in the rocks.

The rock formations also created some fun blowhole-like phenomenon:

Yeye has gone separately on the hike to a view. Which was beautiful, but I think this was the actual highlight -- there was a sea lion completely blocking the stairs going down. So Salvador pretended to be a male sea lion and scared it down. 😂 

So much seen before 8am!  But the morning was far from over. We ate a quick breakfast before we set off at 9 for some wildlife viewing by kayak in Tagus Cove. I am happy to report I did NOT tip the kayak over this time. 

We saw a number of birds again, but the highlight was definitely the sea lion who followed our kayak around for a few strokes!

I honestly was worried I would hit it with my strokes so I had to stop paddling. 

After this we did a glass bottom boat excursion.

Unfortunately there were a number of bubbles in the glass that made visibility hard at times, but the most interesting thing was the collection of brilliant yellow sea sponges -- there were also a number of giant turtles swimming by - made me a bit more excited about the snorkeling this afternoon (I had been on the fence as they said the water would be even colder...and yesterday was already QUITE cold). But seeing the turtles and penguins convinced me that I should it a try. 

But this wasn't all for the morning, we also had a paddle-boarding adventure today! 

This was not for wildlife viewing, this was purely for the spectacle of seeing who would fall in. 😆 I can say I did NOT fall in...but that is also because I never stood up. I did attempt to stand:

But quickly decided kneeling was quite enough. 

Perhaps best shot of the trip (credit: Baba), the sea lion who decided to commandeer the zodiac while it was unused!

Baba actually did make it up...for about 1 second. 😆 

It did actually feel like a decent workout because my legs were clenched so much the entire team trying to maintain my balance.  They were offering complimentary massages in the lounge...clearly not going to pass that up!

After that it was perhaps the most important activity of all: naptime.  There was a photography presentation about how to shoot better smartphone photos which I probably would have benefited from. Nainai, who did go, told us the basics are don't pinch to zoom, just go to ×2 and then crop it later. Also get down low to the level of the animal. And finally, place the eye of the animal in one of the intersections of a pretend 9×9 grid (in other words, avoid putting the animal in the dead center). Let me know if you think my animal photography skills improved after this day...

Onto the snorkeling -- because the sun was shining quite brightly today, the water ended up not feeling quite as cold as I had been dreading. It made for a fairly enjoyable snorkle -- especially because we saw such cool things! Photo proof, you ask? Well...so we learned from a fellow passenger that you can double click the side button to open up the camera and then click the volume buttons to take a photo. Armed with this knowledge, I set forth confidently, ready to take some amazing photos in that carrier case. The results were...less than amazing. 

I mean...I guess you can tell this is a turtle, right?

They were much closer than the photos make them appear. 

But we've snorkeled with plenty of turtles in Hawaii, this next one was a new one for me...can you guess what it is? (Hint, the eyes are the focus point).

Yes, a (granted quite blurry) Galapagos Sea Lion! And the last "spot" of the day! Marine iguanas! There actually were two of them but this is the only shot that was even remotely passable. 

I guess the iphone case is NOT the answer for underwater photography! After we got back, it was time for a super fast shower and change of clothes because we were immediately headed out again for a sunset wildlife walk on yet another new island: Isla Fernandina -- at Punta Espinosa in particular. Onto the zodiacs again!

 The vegetation here was again different from what we saw on Rabida or Isabela. 

This part of the island had some amazing displays of the lava cacti. Again, since it's the LAVA cactus, it is endemic to the Galapagos Islands. The gray parts are basically the ones the plant has decided to sacrifice. Eventually those will fall off in hopes of saving the rest of the plant. 

Gotta take advantage of the amazing lighting for people photos too!

This was the outing where I actually got a little tired of the iguanas. At first it was still pretty cool to see them so up close and personal.

But then you saw there was so many ALL over the place. 

It really helped explain why the name for a group of iguanas is a "mess."

Here's a cool video of the iguanas doing their territorial head bobbing - apparently the dominant males do this to chase off the challengers. 

After the iguanas came the sea lions and fur seals. The facial resemblance to teddy bears helped them stay cute regardless of how many we saw.

Sunset shot of our traveling quad! (Yes that's our ship in the background).

The sea lions were so close by that we all had to get our own individual shots with them:

The sea lions really are too cute. Especially as they try to scamper on land. 

Another day complete. Zodiac back to the ship for cocktail hour and then dinner and then sleep!

I have to say Lindblad really packs these itineraries. So far every single excursion has been really unique and our schedule has just been packed back to back from sunrise to sunset.